Rolling in the Deep
by sarmi147
Summary: Post Season 8 spoilers through Issue 40; After years apart, betrayal, lies, and tragedy, where do they go from here, when they could have had it all.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Rolling in the Deep

Author: Sarmi

Category: Post Buffy Season 8 Spoilers for Issue 40

Genres: Angst

Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy Spike or even Angel but a girl can dream.

Summary: After the roller coaster of Season 8, where does this leave Buffy and Spike

Authors note: The title of this story and lyric within is from the Adele song "Rolling in the Deep"

Prelude: An Army of One no More

**_There's a fire starting in my heart,  
Reaching a fever pitch and it's bringing me out the dark  
_**

Alone.

With an army of slayers at my side I had never felt more alone. A multitude to share the burden with, yet I felt its crushing weight with every breath. It choked at me, like the earth once had as I crawled out of my grave. What had once been a hell of 147 days, spiraled into an infinite present of day to day solitude.

But my army was now scattered, I was a traitorous pariah. My oldest and best friend couldn't even look at me anymore without disgust in her eyes. My watcher dead by the hands of the supposed love my life. Now in the care of a woman I had once envied and loathed at the same time. But even with my life in ruins, I couldn't feel alone. Not anymore. Because when all hope seemed lost he had appeared. As though he had never left me. And after all of the wrong I had done to him, he still had my back. Like he always had, like I knew he always would. Because even though he didn't believe me, he still believed in me.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Rolling in the Deep

Author: Sarmi

Category: Post Buffy Season 8 Spoilers for Issue 40

Genres: Angst

Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy Spike or even Angel but a girl can dream.

Summary: After the roller coaster of Season 8, where does this leave Buffy and Spike?

Authors note: The title of this story and lyric within is from the Adele song "Rolling in the Deep"

Chapter 1: No need for words

_**Finally, I can see you crystal clear.  
Go ahead and sell me out and I'll lay your ship bare.  
See how I leave, with every piece of you  
Don't underestimate the things that I will do.  
**_

I wish I was wrong, that I hadn't just confirmed what I had always known. I always knew her better than she knew herself, my Slayer. Even in a sea of slayers she would always be the only one I saw.

As soon as she laid eyes on me I knew. I have seen every expression of shock she is capable of, if our history proves anything is that I am excellent at eliciting that particular response. But her features showed no sign of surprise. She had known, all along she known and not cared. I had counted the days she was gone, and she could care less that I was back. There is no way she could have meant it at the bottom of that damn crater, no matter how much I hoped she had. I guess I was right to stay away. Build a life she was not the center of.

Now who's lying? I tried to be something without her, but here I was in the middle of another war, trying to save her life even if it cost me mine.

Not only with one look did I know she knew, with one smell I knew who she had been with. Even on the brink of the end of the world, she couldn't resist the Poof. While we manage to bring a building down, the two of them were bringing the world down. God help me, I won't put her in the ground again, even if it means I have to clean of his mess. Again.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Rolling in the Deep

Author: Sarmi

Category: Post Buffy Season 8 Spoilers for Issue 40

Genres: Angst

Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy Spike or even Angel but a girl can dream.

Summary: After the roller coaster of Season 8, where does this leave Buffy and Spike?

Authors note: The title of this story and lyric within is from the Adele song "Rolling in the Deep"

Chapter 2: Sink or swim

_**There's a fire starting in my heart,  
Reaching a fever pitch and it's bringing me out the dark  
**_

"You didn't find me." Neither an accusation nor a question, but a simple sad statement, an ever expanding gulf that lies between us, treacherous to cross.

"Neither did you." So he knows. And while he tries to hide the hurt in the undertones of his voice with a patented smirk, I know better. And god help me, it makes me long for the simpler times of that tone. When the only thing that kept me from him was something as simple as a soul and his lack of one. But current events have once and for all revealed that the soul means little next to the man.

Once again he is so very right. When Andrew returned from LA, with talk of Gandalf the White, I knew that more than a mere ocean separated us. Now it was just a matter as to which one of us was going to be brave enough to swim it. Well, I always did look good in a bikini, and frankly he burns easily.

"Well, you didn't believe me." That's what it comes back to. Everything I have done since I stood on the edge of the crater that was once my home comes back to that.

"Was I wrong?" he asks with a sad resignation.

"No." I reply a little too quickly. And I see that shadow of pain quickly pass his sapphire eyes. Sadly it is something I have seen all too often, and am usually once again the cause of. Even in my dreams it is that shadow that I see. You would think my subconscious would bless me with at least one imaginary joy filled stare.

How can I make him understand that I thought I meant it at the time? That when I said it, I genuinely thought I had found the truth in those words. But what I felt then was simple, an echo of the love I would come to realize I had lost. Because it took losing him to make me realize what loving him really meant, how hollow and empty I had felt when he was no longer near. My love had not been true, no matter how much I wished those words into existence; it has been a selfish love. His love for me had been a constant force in my life and one I did not want to lose. His love had been so large and consuming I mistook it for my own.

Before I can even begin to put into words for myself, let alone explain to him, I can see him build the wall around his heart. His beautiful eyes, always so soulful even before, are a shiny blank mirror. And I know that I have lost the moment, and I have lost my chance. Because I know what is to love him now, that scary no holds barred kind of love Xander once spoke of. I know what is like to live with that love and know that I would never feel it back. I finally understood how he had loved me and god help me, it made me love him more.

_**The scars of your love, remind me of us.  
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all  
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless  
I can't help feeling...**_


End file.
